$200m boost for global polio campaign

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Rotary International have donated $200 million (£97 million) to the global campaign to eradicate polio.

Attempts to eradicate the disease have so far failed and, despite immunisation programmes over the last 20 years, it is still endemic in India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria.

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) launched a new campaign earlier this year and director general Dr Margaret Chan said that the latest donation was 'precisely the catalyst we need to mobilise additional resources'.

'The last pockets of this disease are the hardest and the most costly to reach,' the expert told the BBC.

'We can achieve a polio-free world if the rest of our financial partners stepped up to the challenge.'

Polio is a viral illness that, in its more serious forms, causes muscle paralysis and can be fatal.

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